How to Fund Your Christmas Budget — In Just 15 Minutes per Day!

If you’re looking for simple and legitimate ways to stretch your Christmas budget just a little further, you’ve come to the right place! By participating in just a couple of these activities each day, you can add a pretty significant amount of cash to your Christmas budget!

Take Surveys

While participating in surveys won’t make you rich, it is a great way to make a nice little side stream of income if you have extra time on your hands.

It takes a little while to learn what types of surveys you enjoy most and which ones are worth the effort. If you’re patient, persistent, and thorough, you will definitely earn some money. Don’t get discouraged if you end up spinning your wheels and not making a lot of progress in the beginning. Stick with it and you’ll get a much better grasp on where the best return on your investment of time is when it comes to surveys.

Hint: Be sure to use a separate e-mail address for your survey companies. Your inbox will be very full with surveys, and you don’t want it clogging your regular inbox. Plus, it makes it much easier to set up a separate email address for all your survey companies, so that you can just log into your inbox once per day and read through the emails/take the surveys versus having to wade through your regular inbox to find all of the survey opportunities.

If you’re looking for legitimate survey companies to sign up with, here are the tops ones I recommend:

1. Pinecone Research – This one is my favorite survey company, because I’ve found that it offers the most surveys for the best pay — $3 for each survey completed. This one can be competitive to get accepted into, but they have currently opened their doors to more of a general population for a limited time only! Go here to apply and get started.

And Amy shared her great experience, too: “I have been using Pinecone for several years now, and I make about $100-$150 per year. It’s a great income booster.“

2. Opinion Outpost – This reputable survey company pays in point rewards for every completed survey. You can choose to get paid at $5 for an Amazon gift card or at $10 for cash.

3. Inbox Dollars – You’ll get paid to read emails, search the web, take surveys, and more. I loved earning free gift cards from Inbox Dollars when Jesse was in law school and I had a lot more time than money.

4. MySurvey – This is another survey company I’ve used and earned money from in the past. You can redeem your points earned for cash or prizes and every 1000 points equals $10.

5.Ipsos i-Say: This reputable, global survey-based market research company gives its community members a chance to provide opinions in exchange for survey points that earn you money. Earn towards gift cards to spend at your favorite places such as Starbucks, Amazon, Target, and more. Or just trade in for cash through prepaid VISA gift cards or Pay Pal funds! Go here to see if you qualify. (Spots fill up quickly and reset each month, so if you aren’t accepted, try back around the 1st of the next month!)

6. Toluna – When you sign up for Toluna, you will receive 500 points to welcome you to the site. When you have earned at least 60,000 points, you may redeem your points for a cash reward.

Other Easy Ways to Earn Each Day

1. Swagbucks – If you’ve been following my blog for any length of time, you probably know how much I love Swagbucks. This is one of the easiest ways to earn gift cards to go towards your Christmas budget each year, and it’s a company I’ve been using to earn gift cards for years now!

Like I mentioned above, Swagbucks is not just a survey site. It’s much more than that! In face, Swagbucks started out as solely a search engine, over the past few years, they’ve morphed into much more. They now offer many different ways to earn more Swagbucks making it much easier to earn enough Swagbucks to cash in on their prizes. Some of the most popular ways to earn Swagbucks are doing online searches, signing up for offers, printing coupons, completing special offers, or taking polls.

The Swagbucks that you earn can then be redeemed for a variety of different free items, such as Amazon gift cards, Starbucks gift cards, and much more!

2. Shopkick – This is something I recently got back into, and it is such an easy way to earn gift cards! To get started with Shopkick, you simply download the app, turn on Bluetooth, and walk in to stores.

You’ll get “kicks” just for walking in, which you can then trade in for all kinds of different gift cards, including Starbucks, TJMaxx, Target, Walmart, Old Navy, Best Buy, Lowe’s, Macy’s, Barnes & Noble, and more!

How to Make it Work For You

So what’s the trick to funding your Christmas budget in just 15 minutes per day? Don’t try to do too much. Pick a few ways to earn, and stick to them consistently throughout each week. Over time, the trickles of earnings will add up to multiple gift cards per month to add to your Christmas fund!

Here is just one example of how to easily add $25+ to your Christmas fund each month:

3. Download Ibotta and cash in for rebates on products you’re already buying when you grocery shop! Earn at least $20 in rebates before Christmas to cash out, and add it to your Christmas fund! This requires very little extra time each week when you shop.

As you can see from this example, you’ll earn at least $25 in gift cards each month by investing 15-20 minutes per day at the most! And if you have extra time and you’re pretty serious about funding your Christmas budget, you could really up your earning potential!

Comments

My favorite way to save for Christmas is by grocery shopping at Wal-Mart. It’s a few minutes from my house and cheaper on a few things that I buy than the Aldi across the street. I scan my receipt into Savings Catcher and they price match 29 stores in my area for me. In just over a year, we’ve had nearly $500 rewarded back. I then shop online for gifts (way more options and sellers online) and do site to store so I don’t pay shipping. I love it!

That’s the experience I had so I finally gave up. What annoyed me was the company would send me an email about a new survey for which I was eligible but I’d get halfway through and the survey would shut down telling me I wasn’t qualified. To add insult to injury, I’d never even get the three points I was supposed to for attempting the survey. It became a huge waste of time.

This year Christmas is funded by our Health Insurance company. My husband’s policy has an online wellness component. You track your health, things like weight less, mood, Tobacco intake, take surveys about your well being, read recommended content and even get points for going to your physical. 1 point is worth 1 dollar and you can redeem in $50 increments. So far this year our health insurance cards have earned us about $400, they paid for a new mailbox, start of year school clothes and now most of Christmas. It’s worth checking to see if your health insurance has a wellness plan that includes this, not many people know about it where we are.

I’m wondering if mine has that too. How do u find out? We get gift cards periodically for wearing a boomerang fitness tracker. I’m due $60 in a few weeks from participating. Planning on using it for Christmas shopping 🙂

Here’s how I funded this year’s gifts for my kids:
1. Shopping rewards: one of the grocery stores I shop at has category rewards, such as $10 off your order when you spend $325, and you have a full month to spend that much. I use that $10 reward on a gift, so I do this throughout the year.
2. Cashing in coins: When I pay in cash, I put all of my coins into a jar. I take them to a Coinstar machine and select the gift card option for amazon.com, so there is no counting fee. I use the amazon.com credit and get the Lego sets, etc when they go on a price drop.
3. Rummage sales: I visit a few big rummage sales each year, and often find items that are brand new. I put these into my gift box.
4. Selling items: I don’t sell that much, but when I do, I save the cash and use it for gifts.
5. Making gifts: I knit and crochet, so I can make doll clothes and things like that.